HOUSTON - Construction is underway on the $156 million international terminal at Hobby Airport. The 280,000-sf expansion, funded primarily by Southwest Airlines, will include a five-gate terminal and expansions of the security screening checkpoint and the Southwest ticket counters.

The Houston Airport System will build a $55 million parking garage with 2,500 parking spaces and a third-floor pedestrian bridge to the terminal.

It will also spend about $17 million on roadway modifications, including elevated roadways and an extended drop-off curb. The rest, roughly $13 million, will go toward a new central unit that controls air conditioning for the new part of the airport.

Southwest will have preferential access to four of the five new gates for international travel to accommodate about 20 to 25 international flights a day.

The expansion is scheduled for completion before the end of 2015, with short-hop international flights to cities in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America to begin by 2016. This will increase Hobby's physical footprint by more than 40 percent.

Southwest has flown out of Hobby since 1971 and flies 156 flights a day from the city.